A Pocketful of Poesy was and is again a Poem-a-Day(-on-Average) Blog! For 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and now for 2017 and going forward, you may expect to see 365 poems every year, 366 for leap years.

but aren't they all random?

Monday, June 10, 2024

Jeremy Brett Is Sherlock Holmes: an appreciation of a man who found his role too late.

I prefer Brett’s Holmes,
principally because his sudden hoots, black
moody fits and wild starts

of athleticism
(in short: his w
hole suite of ma
nners) startle the

viewer, what with
their fidelity to Holmes!

As writ by Doyle. Rathbone plays
a more straightlaced take, supremely
so. No one could fault those who put
Rathbone first. He is era-appropriate,
and yet…and yet…our man Holmes

was never era-appropriate, not in any era.

This alone would not be fatal or decisive. For
me, the crashing miscue in the Rathbone dram
atizations was casting Watson as a comedy rel
ief buffoon. What the Brett series gets A+ righ
t is: Watson is by far the more respectable of t
he two. Literally the only human being (apart f
rom the odd villain) who makes light of Watso
n is Holmes, and Holmes does it relentlessly! I
n Brett’s Holmes, while two distinct actors pla
y the Watson role, we’re never invited to laugh a
t
any fault of Watson’s (indeed, only Ben Kingsley

 ever

played a more all-’round competent John W.). It is
simply
that
Brett’s
Holmes

astonishes us: a
static dynamo o
f tics, blank affe
ct and sudden, s
weeping charge.

Neither Watson
nor we the audi
ence could keep
up with Holmes. 

Jeremy Brett inhabits the role like only he ever has.

It is a pity for Holmes fans that his illness overtook h
im during production. The series unravels painfully ov
er the final season, as brother Mycroft is suddenly press
ed into service as the action figure crime-buster He surel
y

was

never meant to be. 

No comments: